Monte Cristo
About Monte Cristo
Edmond Dantes, a young French sailor, is pulled from his bride Mercedes and locked in the Château d'If on a treason charge invented by Danglars, Fernand, and De Villefort. He tunnels through to the Abbé Faria, studies with him for twenty years, and escapes in the abbé's shroud. Faria's map leads him to the treasure on Monte Cristo. He comes back to France, takes revenge on each of the three, and is reunited with Mercedes.
Cast & crew
More about Monte Cristo
Emmett J. Flynn directed for William Fox. Bernard McConville wrote the scenario from Alexander Salvini's adaptation of Charles Fechter's play and Alexandre Dumas's novel. Lucien Andriot photographed it, with tinted sequences, and William Darling was art director.
Themes
Background
Fechter's nineteenth-century stage version, not the novel alone, is the shape McConville followed.
Making
Variety had already, on 16 September 1921, announced the film as a special for William Fox.
Look
Lucien Andriot photographed the ten-reel film, which Fox released with color-tinted sequences.
Preservation
Long treated as lost, it survives from a print found in the Czech Republic. A DVD pairs it with John Gilbert's Bardelys the Magnificent (1926).
Notes
- John Gilbert plays Edmond. Estelle Taylor is Mercedes, later Countess de Morcerf. Spottiswoode Aitken is the Abbé Faria, Robert McKim is De Villefort, and Virginia Brown Faire is Haidée.
- The Boston premiere was about 1 April 1922 at Tremont Temple. Fox's general release was 3 September 1922, copyright LP18994, at 9,828 feet.
- Fox reissued it in 1927, with a New York opening that April.
- George Campbell plays Napoleon. Renée Adorée plays Mademoiselle Danglars.
- The picture was long treated as lost until a print turned up in the Czech Republic.
Scenes
- Dantes is taken from Mercedes and thrown into the island dungeon.
- He substitutes himself for Faria's corpse and is thrown into the sea.
- With the abbé's map he opens the treasure on Monte Cristo.
Influenced by
- Alexandre Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–45)
- Charles Fechter's play
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Monte Cristo (1922).webm)
